TVR breaks the silence ‘I
Nearly a decade after taking control of TVR and five years since the new Griffith made its debut, Les Edgar and his senior team bring evo up to date with the firm’s progress
F WE HADN’T DONE WHAT WE DID, TAKE a brave step and leapfrog a few stages you would normally go through before you produce a road-going thing that you can drive around a track and take up and down the road; had we not done that, we would be in a lot more of a state in terms of timing.’ Les Edgar, chairman of TVR since he took over Britain’s beefiest sports car brand in 2013, is in a bullish and open mood when we sit down before the end of 2021 along with CEO Jim Berriman and operations director John Chasey to get up to speed on all things TVR.
That decision to build, at huge expense, a driveable, working prototype new Griffith was not only to prove the concept to themselves but also to customers, investors and other stakeholders behind TVR’S rebirth. ‘We can jump in it and say: “We’ll bring the car to you.” You can hear it and see it and feel it and drive it. And I think that’s made a huge difference in terms of promoting it,’ continues Edgar.
‘Especially if you speak to someone not in the industry. You can’t show them a mule car,’ adds Berriman, who joined Edgar at TVR after a career at Rover Group that saw him bring the Land Rover Freelander and Mk3 Range Rover to production, followed by a stint at Rolls-royce as part of the team responsible for the Phantom.
For many outside TVR this approach has left the
‘LIFE GETS MORE COMPLICATED WHEN ONE OF YOUR BACKERS IS THE WELSH ASSEMBLY’
firm open to questions regarding its viability. After all, it had a finished car built on Gordon Murray’s innovative istream chassis and a crate engine from Ford ready to go. But crucially it had no factory to build it in and no workforce. Above all, how was it all going to be paid for?
‘It’s rarely a case of “They must be doing brilliantly because they’re not saying anything”,’ says Edgar, who comes across as someone who has fasttracked the automotive industry course on how to resurrect a car brand. ‘The key thing is everything takes longer, from deciding how to do the car with Gordon [Murray] to working with shareholders.’
Life gets more complicated when one of your backers is the Welsh Assembly, which is providing a factory in the Ebbw Vale area of south Wales. All three men express how supportive the Assembly has been, but rules around state aid and funding meant that work on the factory – which started as a refurbishment project but became a full strip-down and rebuild – was delayed, which didn’t help Edgar and his team when it came to raising investment.
‘We got into a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario,’ he says. ‘We explained that our investment case would be more attractive if work was already underway with the factory, and it took more time to get agreement that work could start ahead of our next round of investment and recruiting staff.’ Work
started on the factory in July 2020 and investor conversations started to head in the right direction. Completion of the factory will see TVR take the keys during quarter one of 2022, which allows for both the installation of the istream production facility and the first prototypes to be built.
‘We’re currently finalising how many prototypes we need,’ says Berriman. ‘We need to drive one into a wall, but we’ll also need one for airbag and ABS testing, for example, that will need to be sent to a supplier – most likely Bosch – plus hot and cold weather test cars, powertrain, etc.’ Like many smaller firms, they aren’t in a position to build a prototype for every area of the Griffith’s development, so each test mule will be required to carry out multiple roles. Development work will be undertaken by an as-yetundisclosed third party.
The tasks that face the team – including operations director Chasey, who like Edgar has a technology background though his predominantly app-based – are not being taken lightly. One of the biggest challenges is to get the build-time for each car down to tens of hours rather than the many hundreds the one-off took – but without compromising quality. ‘A car not starting or a door falling off is not acceptable,’ says serial TVR owner Edgar. ‘This was our starting point. It’s why we are using proven components rather than trying to reinvent the wheel by, say, designing and manufacturing our own switchgear. Yes, it will look and feel like a bespoke component, but the switch will be from an OEM supplier, which will have been tested beyond anything we can better.’
This philosophy is also why the new Griffith will initially be powered by a Ford-supplied 5-litre V8; while the Speed Six engine was designed and built under Peter Wheeler’s ownership, to replicate it today would be nigh-on impossible and make the project a non-starter from the get-go.
With keys to the factory and investor money in line, Edgar has also forged a partnership with a lithium mining company that will allow TVR to start looking at alternative powertrains in the future. EVS, hydrogen, and hydrogen fuel cell options are all up for discussion – so long as the end result is that the car feels and drives like a TVR, says Edgar. A mid-engined car wouldn’t be dismissed either, nor a supercharged Griffith. A core attribute of the istream model is that
it allows for (relatively) cost-effective changes to suit the desired powertrain and configuration, allowing for future product planning, which in turn leads to a sustainable future beyond V8s.
Naturally, both Brexit and Covid have had an effect on progress, the former focusing minds on the issues around funding the factory with taxpayers’ money. Welsh leaders have also witnessed Ford closing its factory at Bridgend and Ineos deciding it wanted to build its reimagined British icon (the Defender-like Grenadier) in Portugal rather than, er, Britain. Factor-in Honda closing its Swindon factory over the border in England, plus the knockon effect this had in the supply chain, and the delays, questions and debates over supporting a low-volume British sports car brand become a little easier to understand for those of us on the outside.
Edgar, Berriman and Chasey are determined to make TVR more relevant, both today and for the future. They are acutely aware that working to small series homologation rules means they can produce only 1075 examples of a ‘type’ – coupes and soft-tops are classed as types, so too an EV – and these volumes alone can only be used as a footing to future success and sustainability. But those numbers are also specific to territories such as the EU, so should they replicate their south Wales production template outside the EU the build numbers start from zero once more. So too the opportunities, say the team – a key factor when you consider that the drive to outlaw the sale of petrol-engined cars is predominantly an EU objective. But they are also better prepared than perhaps they were to face a future that has to include alternative energy sources. ‘So long as we can produce a car that looks and drives like a TVR should, we will consider it,’ says Edgar.
But this is all for the future – a long way in the future. Before alternative-powered TVRS and overseas production facilities, there’s a factory in Wales that requires fitting out (planned to start in February) and staff to be recruited and trained to assemble the cars (set to start in the spring) before production and delivery of the first all-new TVR Griffith for 20 years, firmly scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2023. That will be a decade after Edgar embarked on his dream to reboot TVR, but that dream does at least feel as though it’s taken a considerable step towards becoming reality.
‘DELIVERIES ARE FIRMLY SCHEDULED FOR THE FOURTH QUARTER OF 2023’
‘BRISTOL AVENUE COULD BECOME A DESTINATION FOR TVR FANS ONCE MORE’
He was the man who transformed TVR from cottage car-maker into one of the world’s great sports car marques. We chat to Peter Wheeler’s family about his legacy and redeveloping the old factory site
DRIVE UP BRISTOL AVENUE IN BLACKPOOL today and you won’t find much left of the place where Peter Wheeler and his team of mostly young, enthusiastic engineers and designers conceived, developed and built cars like the Griffith, Cerbera and Sagaris. Instead you’ll find the works being replaced by rows of neat, new industrial units catering for a range of small businesses.
The development is called The Wheeler Hub and in a year or two it could become a destination for TVR and sports car fans generally once more because at its heart will be a life-size statue of
6ft 6in Peter Wheeler and his beloved dog, Ned.
The TVR works in Bristol Avenue was never a particularly handsome place, looking more like a factory making something mundane like kitchen equipment – probably because before it became the home of TVR Engineering in the early ’70s that’s exactly what it did. It looked vastly more attractive with sports cars crowding the parking spaces out front, particularly during the successful Wheeler era.
When Wheeler sold TVR Engineering to the young Russian Nikolai Smolenski in 2004, the deal didn’t include the Bristol Avenue factory; Wheeler leased it to him. After TVR went into receivership in late 2006 the buildings were rented to a variety of businesses.
‘A lot of the people that worked at TVR took on units and made their own businesses there,’ says Wheeler’s widow, Vicky Oyston (née Wheeler). ‘Peter’s mechanic still has his business there and up until recently there was a company doing chassis frames and bodywork, so TVR has never quite left the place.’
The statue of Peter and Ned, commissioned by Vicky, has been designed by Graham Browne, TVR’S chief designer from ’98 to 2005, and the drawings are now with Rotherham-based DNA Metalwork. The forms of Peter and Ned will be cut from 10mm thick ‘weathering steel’ on a state-of-the-art fibre-laser machine, the latest in intricate and clean cutting technology. Over time, exposed to the elements, the steel will gain an orange, oxidised surface finish just like Antony Gormley’s massive artwork Angel of the North, which overlooks the A1 at Gateshead.
‘As the statue is going in the middle of the site, it will be a while before we put it in place,’ says Vicky. Work has just started on phase two. The roads around will have evocative names, too; there’s already a Tuscan Way and other Wheeler-era models will get name-checked in the finished development, which will cover the entirety of the former TVR factory site.
Bristol Avenue is a part of Vicky’s heritage, too. She joined TVR in 1994, initially working with Ben Samuelson on the PR side. ‘No-one had a job title as such, we filled in wherever needed, so I started looking after the Tuscan race weekends with Ben as well. Then, further along the line, I ended up as Peter’s PA.’ They later married and had three children together.
After Peter’s death in 2009, Vicky ensured his last projects were completed: the amphibious Scamander and the 5000M that had been built for him by EX-TVR employees for historic racing. ‘We still have Peter’s Tuscan Challenge racer, number eight, and the 5000M,’ says Vicky. ‘Joe is desperate to get out in that somewhere!’
Joe, 17, is the youngest of the offspring and last year competed in the ultra-competitive Ginetta Juniors race series, finishing in the top ten and earning the accolade of ‘top overtaker’ having gained an impressive 96 places over the season.